My Blogs

August 13, 2006

View of Middle America From Rehoboth Beach

We left early from Washington, DC to join the family reunion at Rehoboth Beach, Delaware - one of the oldest resort destinations in the US. These reunions happen every year or two, and over the past 20 years have frequented many of the venerable vacation spots in the US, including the White Mountains of New Hampshire, the Jersey Shore, Santa Barbara, and Grand Haven on Lake Michigan. Rehoboth Beach has beautiful sandy beaches, affordable rentals, a mile-long boardwalk, and a plethora of rides, attractions, eateries, bars and ice cream parlors. The hoi polloi are long gone to places of a more exotic bent - Bermuda, Virgin Islands, Seychelles. What they have left behind is a retro experience tuned to the sensibilities and tastes of Middle America. How would we fare?

How America Drives. We were forewarned to get there early, as
Saturday is the turn date - everyone departing from their week-long
rentals, or arriving for the next week, at the same time. We got an
early start, and made good time: across DC on L Street to New York
Avenue, then a straight shot out until it becomes the multi-laned and
speedy US 50. We were able to see how urban development had pushed the
ghetto away from the White House (16th Street) and the core Avenue of
America - Pennsylvania Avenue from the White House to the Capital. What
used to be seedy areas in the single digit streets above Pennsylvania
Ave were now gentrified and bustling. When we crossed beyond the area
of renewal, the change was palpable. We hustled out of town and onto
the Chesapeake Bay Bridge, a modern marvel that spans one of the most
fertile fisheries in the US. Making good time, we became overconfident
and stopped at the first of many outlet store malls. When we arrived at
Rehoboth Beach, we hit the Saturday crush. A mile of driving took an
hour. In retrospect, better to come late; it is hard to get there from
DC and miss the changeover of renters between 10 am and 2 pm.

Sitting in the jam, it was hard not to notice how the cars had
changed. We had set off in the generic rental car - a Ford Taurus - but
now found ourselves dwarfed by massive trucks, SUVs and minivans. We
yearned to drive one of those big guys, sitting above the crowd. No
little French "Smart Car" for us, especially not after a recent story
out of Paris. Apparently the French version of the 911 emergency line
got a frantic call from a Smart Car driver. They pulled over a city
bus, and looked on the front bumper - where the Smart Car was perched,
with the driver inside, clutching his cell phone. The bus driver said
he had noticed a slight bump when he pulled onto the expressway, but
hadn't seen the little guy at all, and must have driven with him stuck
on the bumper for many kilometers. If only Ford would build an SUV with
a proper hybrid engine, so we could have our guilt-free SUV! The
American Dream is not sitting on a city bus, nor crammed in a tiny,
tinny car. The greatest form of mass transit is the car - gets you from
where you are to where you want to be when you want to go.

Hunched in our Taurus, we pulled over for a bite to eat, while the
traffic dissipated. We then noticed another facet of the Middle
American experience. We have learned to talk of Blue States and Red
States, but it is better to think of Red America as surrounding the
Blue cities. I first noticed this growing up in Oregon. A short way
outside of town, everyone began to talk in a slow Southern drawl. "Took
ma dawg down to the crick, tree'd a 'coon, ..." Maybe in the West it is
the influence of the Okies migrating from Oklahoma during the '30s dust
bowl to better farming lands; but I notice it in most places, except in
the industrial North. And got a whiff of it in Rehoboth Beach as well.
Reminds me of the observation of Tom Wolfe in The Right Stuff, that
airline pilots all seem to imitate the slow drawl of the first man to
break the sound barrier, Chuck Yeager - the very model of the Right
Stuff. You know the type:

Well, folks, sorry about that little wind sheer - not often you drop
three thousand feet in four seconds! Why, better than an E ride at
Disneyland! Don't be too worried about those masks that dropped down -
just put them on and you'll feel better. We may have lost the right
engine, but shucks, I had it worse in 'Nam and always brought my bird
home. Settle back, enjoy the flight - we should be landing shortly.
Very shortly ...

How America Plays. Rehoboth Beach has a mile long boardwalk. At
night it comes to life, with bumper cars, merry-go-rounds, miniature
golf, soft ice cream, funnel cakes, and salt water taffy. During the
day it makes for fine jogging - the wood has lots of give, and the
boardwalk is a mile long, so you can pace your run. Only hazard is to
jog past a sunbather drenched in suntan lotion and get momentarily
asphyxiated.

The beaches are long and sandy - very nice. Unfortunately a
jellyfish infestation made swimming too itchy, so people stayed out of
the water and baked. Most meandered around the boardwalk, eating pizza
or slurping energy drinks, which turn out to have an incredible
cocktail of calories.

Our group had several walkers, some joggers, bike riders - a fairly
active bunch. In the evening we would walk or *drive* the short
distance to the beach and play twilight football in the sand, or
volleyball, or just cruise the boardwalk. One day we went crabbing at a
local inland salt marsh. Another time the kids went to a local water
world slide park. Some of us considered fishing offshore but were a bit
deterred by the weather.

For someone who lives in Mediterranean climate, the East Coast can
feel a bit tropical. OK, those of you who enjoy Houston in summer would
laugh, but this week the air was a bit heavy and sodden. So we vegged
out, and went to several summer movies, smothered in air conditioning.

How America Shops. The drive to the beach is lined with Middle
American shopping - five different outlet malls, a Wal-Mart and a
KMart. At one point we journeyed down to the nearby gay beach to see if
we would find a slightly more upscale Target, but that beach has yet to
be gentrified, so we quickly hustled back to our outlet store heaven.

Outlet stores have a style all their own. Bargains abound, but much
of the merchandise is not marked down, simply last year's failed
fashion. One has to pick and choose a bit to find the deals. We found a
bunch.

After my girls brought me along for hours-long clothes shopping
sprees five days in a row, I escaped into a Black & Decker outlet
store. I bought a few tools I really didn't need, but felt better for
it.

How America Eats. Food was a bit of an experience as well. Middle
America eats at chain restaurants, like Applebee's and Ruby Tuesdays, a
step up from fast food. We chanced a Ruby Tuesdays, and sat down to
look at the salads. Three of the six came with fries. I am not making
this up. We politely left. Rehoboth Beach has what seem to be nice
seafood places, but out on the strip with outlet stores, the choices
are mostly chains.

We spent each evening with my wife's extended family, comprised of
many families ranging in age from 8 to 80. Each night, a different
family would plan and cook dinner for 28 people, and we would sit down
to chat before heading off to twilight beach football or volleyball.
One night got us into a discussion of food and obesity.

Processed food may be the next Tobacco. Already the Forces of
Righteousness are forming. Sugar may be a toxin - a recent study says
too much of it is embedded in processed foods, overwhelming our normal
hunger mechanism (sugar in, insulin out, other hormones suppress
appetite). The book The Omnivore's Dilemmainstead sees the problem as
the corn processing industry. (Check out the video interview that comes with the book on the Amazon site.) High fructose corn syrup has replaced
sugar in many soft drinks and processed foods. It arose in the '70s
when we put tariffs on imported sugar. (That sure made friends for us
among the Caribbean nations). We impose tariffs on imported sugar, but
do not on imported oil. Sugar is cheaper than HFCS, and tastes better;
but after tariffs, HFCS is cheaper. The Food Police thinks HFCS causes
obesity, as it has a higher fructose blend than sugar, and fructose
does not cause the normal appetite suppression hunger mechanism as well
as sucrose.

HFCS can also be blamed for the New Coke fiasco. Any cola tastes
better with sugar than HFCS. Go buy kosher Coke, or Mexican Coke, and
you'll see. Coke switched in 1979 to save cost, but Pepsi didn't switch
until 1984, and in the interim John Scully (yes, that John Scully)
launched the Pepsi Taste Test. Pepsi clobbered Coke in blind taste
tests. Coke panicked, and New Coke was their response to the Pepsi
Taste Test - a pretty good HFCS cola formula. Coke drinkers wanted the
less sweet old formula, and six months after launch New Coke was pulled
for Coke Classic. By then Pepsi had switched to HFCS and the battle no
longer had to be waged.

An even broader attack on American Diet came from the low-carb diet
fads of ten years ago, which blamed refined flour as well as sugar for
causing obesity. White bread is quickly digested into glucose, just
like sugar - a slice of Wonder Bread is like swallowing a handful of
refined sugar.

And so it goes - trans-fatty acids (TFAs) are the latest food type to be blamed. Others will follow.

The food industry is also blamed for the homogenization of taste.
Many tomatoes are picked before they are ripe, sprayed to make them
look a tasty red, and sold as ripe in US supermarkets. They ship better
this way - but they taste flat. If you ever have a ripe, real tomato,
you will taste the difference immediately. Beef in the US is corn fed,
which causes consistent taste, but if you ever have grass-fed beef, you
can tell the difference - tastier. Corn-fed cattle get pumped with
antibiotics and growth hormone to counter the effect of excessive sugar
from corn - sugar is a toxin to cows as well as people. If MacDonald's
were to shift to grass-fed beef, overnight the taste and healthiness of
beef products would skyrocket. Some farms in Oregon are growing natural
pork from pigs that live in a yard and not a pen. You can taste the
difference. Natural pork is no longer the other white meat, i.e. as
bland as chicken. True range-free chicken also doesn't taste like
chicken - it has a richness that has been lost in the homogenization of
food. Most so-called free-range chicken is not. A SF venture capitalist has invested in free-range fish farms -
large swaths in the open ocean to grow and harvest large fish like
tuna. Apparently the taste is remarkable. More and more fish is farm
raised, and bland tasting, if not somewhat diseased.

In our evening discussion of food, a group pounced on one of the
brothers, who is a top salesman at one of the largest food processing
companies. Waves of argument crashed over him, and he calmly fielded
the questions and concerns. His core rebuttal was that the food
industry serves its customers, and they want cheap healthy food, not
premium priced, Blue America, tree-hugging organic food. Now he
realized this was too facile, that his industry has a responsibility
that goes beyond selling people what they want to buy, health be
damned. His firm has removed TFAs from ice cream, and is researching
how to make healthier food more cheaply. They have a chance to pursue a
breakout strategy of capturing the hill of the-most-healthy-brands.
Currently they see this opportunity and are working towards it, but
have not made the break from the cheap, volume business.

The consumer is buying less from the center of the store and more
from the edges, meaning a great trend is moving through Middle America
to pay more mind to produce, bakery, deli and other fresher foods, and
less to the packaged foods and (heaven forbid) the frozen food section.
The Food Police will dive into this market at about the same time as
tastes and attitudes are shifting anyway, and probably succeed in
shifting the food of Middle America.

But we'll still want fries with our greens.

We left Rehoboth after an enjoyable week, made more so by the
company. On the drive back we skipped the Rehoboth Beach breakfast
places to avoid the coming traffic crush, and then drove quite a ways
without seeing any eateries. Getting a bit hungry, we gave in to the
first MacDonald's we saw. Continuing on, we all had a bit of a tummy
ache. Maybe we ate too fast. Or maybe the food is too processed, too
cheaply made, with too many TFAs, HFCS, and other inventions of the
food processing industry. We passed an outlet store, and felt tempted
to stop and shop one more time. Soon we reached DC, and disappeared
back into our normal life.

It's all about portion size. Come on, when we were kids, remember those bitty bags of chips mom would slip into your lunch, half an ounce? Today, people inhale a 5 or 8 oz. bag in a single sitting without giving it a second thought. Same with fries; remember the fries served in little 3 inch square bags? Don't get me started on Big Gulps!

There is lots of mindless round-the-clock eating going on. How about your kids' sporting events? Garbage snacks served after the game? There is no event or gathering too insignificant to warrant the groaning board! Every new electronic gizmo contributes to a more sedentary lifestyle.

I spent my childhood being banished from the house on summer days and Saturdays; "Go out and play" was the admonition. We would hop on our bikes and disappear for 10 or 12 hours, stopping in at home to gulp down a perfunctory lunch, and off we went, returning home at the end of the day spent and sweaty.

Sleep deprivation causes weight gain too. If you don't get your eight hours a night, it messes with your metabolism. If you're awake, your body senses it has to conserve energy.

The American consumer is so besotted with choice, I fear there's no turning back. Do we really need 12 different kinds of Wheat Thins? Oreos? Coke?

Personally, 99% of outlet shopping depresses me. Most of the stuff is manufactured specifically for the outlet market. The bland and predictable nature; same stores everywhere you go.

It's particularly queasy-making in Rehoboth, like you have to travel through the gates of hell to get to the other side. No getting to the beach without passing through! Escapes me that people have weekend homes there; navigating through the traffic and kitsch on a regular basis? No way!

Good column, Duncan. Your other stuff, well it's too jargon-laden for me to understand! Do worry about the jacked up rates on student loans though. Further restricting the educational choices of the true middle class. The very poor and brilliant will do fine, and the rich, too!

My one-sentence summary of your email would be, "consumers are very bad at making 'rational' choices that fully account for all the long-term, short-term, and social factors of their decisions." Once you've given up on market fundamentalism a whole new vista opens up before you!